WHY I CHOSE MY ICON / A REPOST

  THE WHITE STRAW HAT

© David Wainland 2004

Unknowingly my wife and I had arrived on Key West for a short vacation just in time for Hemingway Days. The island was unusually crowded for a July day and it was brutally hot. Duval Street, famous for its small shops and infamous bars, was crowded with visitors walking the many-tented booths that were temporary homes to traveling artists.

Since my profession is exactly that, I insisted we walk the show. My wife, Jamie, wanted to know if this was a true vacation or a, "Busman's Holliday." I laughed to cover up my guilty conscience and dragged her down the avenue.

This was the first of our many trips to the Keys and by far the most influential in my life. The year was 1996; I was still middle aged (by insurance standards, I still considered myself young at 64) and open minded enough to accept anything. In Key West, expect anything and you will never be surprised.

As we strolled down the streets gazing at Artists and stores alike we stumbled across the famous Sloppy Joes, The restaurant/bar best known as the hangout for Ernest Hemingway. At the time, I had a full beard, white as Montana snow, and as we stepped in to get out of the sun somebody asked me if I was there for the Hemingway Look Alike Contest, an annual event. I said no and suddenly realized the place was filled with men whose faces bristled with gray beards, their shirts overflowing with bountiful paunches and their heads capped by white straw hats. I was amazed.

Later that same day we visited the Hemingway House, home to dozens of six toed cats and the place he spent his time in 1935.

On my way home I purchased a white straw hat and wore it as I drove back, fancying myself as a great writer. The traffic was slow going and as we passed through Lower Matecumbe Key, I noticed a large monument off to the right. With plenty of time to spare, we stopped to find out more about it. The monument is dedicated to the thousand or more people who died during the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, many of them WW-I veterans.

The visit stuck in my mind, the monument struck my heart and the hat was stuck in a closet where it lay until 2001, when I finally found myself motivated to begin writing a novel about that hurricane. It was hard to get started and almost as a joke, I searched for and found that hat, put it on and sat down at my keyboard. Two years, three hundred and fifty pages and ninety thousand some odd words later my first book was finished.

Next to me sits a 1930 Woodstock typewriter the only other homage I offer to that time. I am still motivated and I never write without that hat.

I am wearing it as I write this.